Donald Trump gave a speech last night in which he he claimed that he only lost the 2020 election because foreigners interfered. He is obsessed with that ignominious defeat, because his ego is so huge that he can’t tolerate any contradiction of his self-regard.
Donald Trump accused China of interfering with the 2020 election in a primetime televised address that laid bare his continuing obsession with his defeat to Joe Biden, but which opponents warned was a smokescreen for him to meddle in the forthcoming congressional midterms.
In a 25-minute speech on Thursday that had been hyped by Trump himself, the US president cast extraordinary doubts on the integrity of the US electoral process, saying it was “catastrophically” short of standards of fairness and trust, and vulnerable to trespassing by foreign powers.
I don’t believe China had anything to do with it — that country is happy to sell us crap, and no doubt is savoring our ongoing collapse, but they don’t have to do anything to trigger our self-destruction. Republicans are pleased to do that to ourselves, because they are busy pursuing an illusory and contradictory fantasy of American greatness that is centered on racial purity and coddling of capitalists. There is no evidence of election fraud anywhere. Every time those accusations are tracked down they find at best a handful of fraudulent votes, never enough to have any kind of significant effect, but every time a Republican loses an election they start shrieking about Democrats cheating.
They are overlooking the insidious and entirely legal interference that has been going on for decades: the lies and propaganda of Fox News, masterminded by Rupert Murdoch, and how it has corrupted the brains of an entire generation of Americans. This is the seed that has grown into the idiocy that fuels our descent, which is now self-perpetuating. Barking at the Chinese is futile and irrelevant. Look into our systemic failures to regulate our own media.
Dear me, I do hope you aren’t harbouring the completely baseless belief that your country would need any EVIDENCE for persecutions? That would be somewhat unbecoming of a critical thinker, wouldn’t it?
And almost all of those fraudulent votes were cast by Republicans.
Well, I agree with this part.
You know, if anything it’s probably in the global interest of China to keep the orange arsehole around – the less stable the US is, the more opportunity for the extension of Chinese soft power across the globe. On the other hand, the Chinese seem rather more interested in making their own country prosperous and successful than in interfering with other people’s business. Maybe the leaders of the US could try that…
Trump filed 61 lawsuits claiming interference in the 2020 elections.. Trump produced no evidence the 2020 elections were stolen from him. Empty accusations are not evidence.
Actually almost all of the actual fraud that has been proven — as you say, very little — has been on behalf of Republicans, including the Dumpster.
FOREIGN election influence?
#1: Israel.
But that is the name that must not be said.
Dumpster has a habit of accusing others of misdeeds that he has done. If any foreign power meddled with the 2020 election, I’m confident it was on behalf of and coordinated with the Trump campaign. In fact, I recall some evidence…a concept Dumpster has no idea of…that the Trumps met foreign agents (Russian) leading up to the 2016 election.
@cervantes: I assume the logic is “I cheated and lost, so they must have cheated more”.
Republicans don’t mind foreign influence or cheating in elections as long as it benefits them.
After Dementia Don was done I though “That’s it? That’s his best shot? That is so pathetic I almost feel bad for him.”
Where states have reviewed their voter rolls, they have always found that non-citizens voting has always been a non-problem. The Red state of Utah just finished a comprehensive review of their voter rolls. They found very few non-citizens registered to vote and half of those never voted anyway.
Utah looked at 2 million registered voters.
They only found 27 that were non-citizens and only 13 non-citizens had ever voted.
Non-citizens voting is not a problem in the USA.
Which means the Trump voter suppression act, the SAVE act is a solution searching for a problem
@7. Snarki, child of Loki : “FOREIGN election influence? #1: Israel. But that is the name that must not be said.”
Also Russia or rather Putin.
Do Murdoch and or Musk count too?
All of whoem wanted Trump as POTUS especially Netanyahu.
Plenty of evidence for Putin helping Trump. Indeed, there’s wikipages for that in 2020* and 2024* – and 2018 too even.***
.* See : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2016_United_States_elections
.** Plus : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2024_United_States_elections
.** As well as : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2018_United_States_elections
NB. Notable that the Foreign interferers -especially those worst Russian ones – always try to get the Repugs elected and undfermine theDemocratic party. Becioz of course they know who is bad for the USoA ad want them incharge.
Also notable that Jill Stein was a Putin shill and supporter too.
China, China, China.
On topic: stumbled across this article on May 7, pointing out irregularities in 2024 vote statistics + possible means of said irregularies via the uninteruptable power supply (UPS) units attached to voting machines… Long read but shows a possibility to hack voter machines in 2024. So, today we get announcement for an “overhaul of voting system” from your president. Perhaps he wants new, improved, UPSs with wider, starlink-ed bandwidth…
Imagine being the first caveman, once fire was invented, discovering that farts are inflammable.
It’s not the false, deceitful claims of ballots being shredded, stolen or put down the sewer we should worry about. The primary concern should be that ‘citizens united’ unleashed the corporate crapitallist plutocrats ability to obscenely influence weak minded people who revel in their ‘patriotic’ ignorance. This includes domestic and foreign powers, the right-twisted elements of murderdoch-style mainslime media, aipac, magat radio, etc.
It’s optimistic to think the damage is contained to a single generation.
Seth Meyers on the Late Night show said “We tape the show before the speech so we don’t know what Trump said, and if you watched the speech you don’t know either”.
China, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar all spend far more on lobbying in the U.S. than Israel does.
My comment about “#1: Israel” is about their effectiveness, not spending, or even “how bad is the effect”. Part of that is having a lot of direct knowledge from people that have lived in the US, but not currently. UK probably has more of that knowledge, but seems not to care as much.
All nations try to “influence” others. With varying degrees of evil, cost, and effectiveness.
Seth Meyers needs better joke-writers.
A bit more flooding of the zone: https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cd9w8xk75ndt?post=asset%3A7643b4b5-3e25-4d56-b84d-6e3fcdcf64e4#post
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Trump threatens to add smoke damage costs to tariffs on Canada
US President Donald Trump is hitting out at Canada for the wildfire smoke wafting south into the United States.
“We are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein, and the United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air, the quality of which is dangerous, and totally unacceptable!” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Trump says he will call Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to demand an explanation over his country’s “willful negligence” that has imposed an “incalculable cost” on the US via the smoke.
The “cost of this pollution must of necessity be added to the TARIFFS Canada is currently paying”, Trump threatens.
I mean, technically Murdoch is not foreign interference any more: he was born here in Australia and got his start, but he changed his citizenship to US because he saw more money-making and discourse-poisoning options there. Hasn’t stopped him doing plenty of damage here too…
Dunno about ‘time machine kill baby Hitler’, but ‘time machine redirect young Rupert’ seems like a very high-yield intervention to me.
Republicans are the ones committing voter fraud and one of them wants to be the senator from Texas. Ken Paxton has voted while registered at an address he hasn’t lived at for more than 2 years which is against the law. And he’s the one in charge of pursuing voter fraud and has been warning people of the consequences of committing voter fraud. Except for him, of course.
@25. If not Murdoch, then Conrad Black or Robert Maxwell, or the Koch brothers. Or any other number of kleptocrats funding right wing “think tanks”, or buying media outlets like Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post. For some weird reason Americans treat anything the rich say as profound and meaningful, and not shallow and self-serving as the rest of the world does.
Pointing the finger at Faux News, and the other outlets like them, is 100% correct. They have weaponized stupid, and they know how to use it. That it is legal, apparently, to be doing what they are doing, there really needs to be something that can be done about it. What, I don’t know. But creating an alternate reality, with alternative facts, and pretending like none of it is make believe bullshit, ought not be marketable as “news.”
Sort of the same thing with religion…
lilc01f, yes, but that should not work on a reasonable populace. Media bubble stuff.
I saw this yesterday, it really seems cultish:
John #24 — Here’s Scientific America’s take on the Canada smoke situation: U.S. cities have the worst air quality in the world right now—here’s how to stay safe.
Dumpster should be careful hitting on Canada about wild fires because the US has an enormous number of fires cooking right now. All across the west, Florida, Alaska, and even some decent size fires burning on the Minnesota-Canada border.
Trump’s Ex-Campaign Manager Is Running An Israeli Influence Operation Targeting the MAGA Base
@30
Dozens of Wildfires Are Suddenly Burning in Oregon
@25. bravus : “Dunno about ‘time machine kill baby Hitler’, but ‘time machine redirect young Rupert’ seems like a very high-yield intervention to me.”
Yes. Also redirect Musk, redirect Trump and redirect Thiel too please.
If only we had one.. & could change the timelines accordingly. I hate the one we’re in. Really doe sseem like one of thsoe ones where the baddies win and create an ever worsening dystopia..
That’s silly. Pure wishful thinking.
To change it, one would have to exist.
Time travel is possible, but not that simplistic or incoherent.
(As in, we travel 1 second per second into the future relative to ourselves)
@12
The Guardian is incapable of calculating percentages:
Out of 2+ million registered voters, (possibly) 52 non-citizens make for at least 99.9974% citizens (not 99.72%).
I guess the Guardian asked a statistical parrot to do the calculation.
“Just one more question, Sir. Who was the president when this interference occurred? And when you asked Georgia to find you 12000 votes, was that part of the interference?”
Of course Trump showed evidence for interference, the fact that he lost despite being the perfect candidate, having done everything right and being entitled to a victory because he’s the hero of his own story. Of course the only reason he lost is because he was unfairly denied victory. Every spoiled six-year old would agree with him!
This is a perfect representation of the right-wing mindset. Never admit wrongdoing, never look for anything to fix about yourself, you deserve the world and only malicious hostile forces deny it because they hate you personally for your awesomeness.
wereatheist @35, going by a second-hand excerpt is not good enough.
The Guardian got it right, if you actually read the article: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/29/utah-voter-roll-audit-trump-lawsuit
The actual report confirms their reportage: https://ltgovernor.utah.gov/wp-content/uploads/CITIZENSHIP-FULL-SUMMARY-2.pdf
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DEIDRE M. HENDERSON
LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR
May 27, 2026
In April 2025, my office initiated a comprehensive citizenship review of Utah’s voter registration
rolls. A preliminary update was published in January. Today we are releasing the final
comprehensive report of our review, which involved cross-referencing more than 2 million
records against the Driver License Division and/or the Systematic Alien Verification for
Entitlements (SAVE) program for citizenship verification.
Federal and state laws have historically required individuals to affirm citizenship by checking a
box and signing an affidavit on their voter registration applications. Prior to H.B. 209 (2026
General Session), state law did not require verification of citizenship. However, the review from
my office confirmed that 99.72% of Utah’s registered voters are verifiably U.S. citizens.
During the review, we found 27 confirmed noncitizens, whom clerks have since removed from
the voter rolls. Additionally, there are 5,007 registrants whose citizenship status we were unable
to confirm, many of whom registered to vote years before driver license or Social Security
numbers were required. This week, these individuals will receive notice of the new citizenship
requirements in state law. To be eligible to vote in upcoming state and local races, they will need
to show proof of citizenship to their county clerks, otherwise they will receive a federal-only
ballot. My office also identified 25 registered voters who are probable noncitizens. These
individuals will have 30 days to provide proof of citizenship before being removed from voter
rolls by their respective county clerks.
—
Heh heh heh. They said it was from the report, so clearly they didn’t do the mathy thing.
BTW, ‘statistical parrot’ is very much incorrect, too. Shows a lack of awareness of how they function.
LLMs generate new arrangements, not merely copy snippets; they build a model and transform inputs to outputs via that model.
Anyway, a rather poor and lazy guess.
John,@12 did not provide a link to the Guardian.
Adding the 5007 voters with registration before present rules, this still allows at least 99.76 of voters to vote in the next elections, except possibly local dog catcher and some such.
So Deidre can’t calculate, too, obviously.
That’s very interesting, John, possibly you could elaborate?
I know. I copypasted into a bot and it found it for me.
Sure. But it’s a shitton closer than your 99.9974%, upon which you tried to lambast the messenger’s alleged lack of math.
Do I really need to? No.
But, since you ask so nicely: LLMs don’t actually store training data, but rather a highly compressed mathematical map of concepts, logic, and grammar that enables them to generate new output content by applying that internal model of underlying rules to an input. Basically, those engines construct responses, rather than merely repeating data or looking stuff up. Generalised transformers.
Billions upon billions of degrees of freedom; that’s where the misapprehension that their makers don’t know how they arrive at their answers comes from.
There you go. Can’t say I am not accommodating, sometimes.
John. the 99.9974% portion can even vote for dog catcher :)
LLM is just Eliza. evolved.
It found the Guardian article. You did not.
So that’s informative.
But sure, it’s just a parrot. A stochastic one. Just Eliza.
Facts be damned, right?
(Also, I did not miss you wrote ‘statistical’ from your apparently inchoate recollection; that is not the normative concept)
No I think he is well aware of what evidence there is He just calls anything he does not think will help him “win” Fake News! and blames someone else for it.
It is not important what he really thinks or believes is real or true. He is only interested in what those he is talking to think and what he can get them to believe. He is using the only tools he has, lies and bluff. He is not long term thinking clearly.
People often react to what they think is true or what they want to be true, so any and everything he says is to shape that for his own ends objective truth plays no part what so ever.
@ Morales
There’s probably never been a better metaphor for AI than that “Cow Tools” cartoon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_tools
Half-assed attempts at superficially vaguely resembling something useful while actually being useless. X-D
@ John Morales #29
Now, I never said we have a reasonable populace! I wish that were true. I live in the South, I see unreasonable people all day long. Red hat country,
The video does offer a glimmer of hope, that people can wake the fuck up. Can’t happen fast enough. Even if things became somewhat sane tomorrow, we’ve been set back 100 years on policy, and may never regain our standing across the globe. Which was not exactly perfect, but we weren’t quite the butt of the joke as we are now..
And we are deserving of every bit of it. Our democracy is an oligarchy in sheep’s clothing, we’ve allowed propaganda to be disguised as news, and the the rubes just can’t help but to be rubes. After typing this I feel like a drink…a little whisky in the coffee will help. Right?